Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman
In “‘Closer Than an Eye’: The Interconnections of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Colin N. Manlove does a great job of reminding his readers of the importance of the setting to a story. “The Gothic novel,” he writes, “usually employs as its setting some remote land, castle, tarn or wilderness: but here [in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde] the hideous events take place in the midst of the relatively populated streets of London. . . because the purpose of this novel is to show the dark side of one peculiar man’s respectable and citified self.” Moreover, the setting, common to both the novel’s protagonist and the other residents of the city, show him to be of the same sort as they; “they are seen in some way to share in his situation. . . . All in the story tread the same streets, inhabit the same fog” (The Dark Fantastic, 3). In the same article, Manlove points out the way that Robert Louis Stevenson creates, through description, a link between his main character and a row of buildings along a street:
The street of shops looks outward to a public; it is concerned with putting on a fine front and drawing people in. The building that juts forward has only an unopened door, no windows, and neither bell nor knocker on the door. Its preoccupation is with exclusion. . . . Yet it is part of the street, even if it is not integrated with it and thrusts its way forward. Both the street and the house are personified: the street drives a thriving trade, the shop fronts invite “like rows of smiling saleswomen” and veil their more florid charms on Sundays. The “sinister block of building. . . thrust[s] forth its gable on the street,” had “a blind forehead of discoloured wall” and bears “the marks of negligence in every feature.” It is not much of a leap to see the shops as suggestive of the respectable, ambitious civil area of mind--in short, all that Jekyll is to seem to be . . (6).Chillers and Thrillers’ articles have likewise stressed the effectiveness of appropriate settings to horror, one example of which is the essay concerning Bram Stoker’s short story “Dracula’s Guest.”